English Language Learners

F.E.

01:24

chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2014/06/18/…

The article is about "cow's milk" versus "cows' milk". But what's wrong with "cow milk", compare to "goat milk"?

This issue comes up often on grammar forums. :)

One of the commentators suggested exactly that: "cow milk".

Another commentator mentions: "goat cheese" and "grass stains".

Damkerng T.

02:47

@snailboat Hehe. I dropped my verb!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's okay. I verb stuff all the time. That one's natural for me. In fact, I'm certain I've said things like "Japanesing" dozens of times :-)

F.E.

@DamkerngT. Ya like Japanese, eh? Here's something Japanese: youtube.com/watch?v=kmCHSEVav4o

Anonymous

@F.E. Oh, I saw that trailer! But not the movie

Anonymous

Nemureru there is archaic and actually means nemurete iru

F.E.

Yeah, I've seen the movie 3 times now. I'm going to see it again, mainly for the "curse scene" when Maleficent lays down that curse on the baby Aurora--it's one of the best scenes in the movie actually. :)

Anonymous

02:53

Oh, is it good? I thought from your discussion earlier that it might not have been

Anonymous

I saw it when I was looking through Disney Japan's YouTube channel for Frozen videos not too long ago :-)

F.E.

Though, the cuts of the "curse scene" that they show in the trailers are bad, make the movie look poorly, imo. But in the movie, the actually scene was quite powerful!

Damkerng T.

@F.E. That clip is nice. Thanks!

F.E.

@snailboat The movie grows on you. :D

@DamkerngT. It wasn't for free. Now send money! You seen it, now pay! . . . Wait, I sound like cable TV.

Damkerng T.

Can I send it like this?

[money]

Anonymous

02:55

@DamkerngT. The title of the earlier 眠れる森の美女 "Sleeping Beauty" is a good example of a couple bits of Japanese grammar

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

Relative clauses, cross-linguistically, can attach high or low

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I ran into this の problem already!

F.E.

I went to see the move the 2nd time in order to see how many times Maleficent called Aurora "Beast" or "Beastie".

Anonymous

In English, we tend to attach low; in Japanese, we tend to attach high

F.E.

02:56

@DamkerngT. We only accept $USA.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure what AのB should mean A of B or B of A. I guess it's usually B's A. :D

@F.E. USD [money] <-- I guess this is better. :P

Anonymous

Here, we have nemureru "sleeping" and mori no bijo (lit. "beauty of the forest")

Anonymous

There are two ways it could attach: [ nemureru mori ] no bijo, lit. "beauty of the sleeping forest"

Anonymous

Or nemureru [ mori no bijo ] (lit. "sleeping [ beauty of the forest ]")

Anonymous

Japanese prefers the latter sort of relative attachment

Damkerng T.

02:58

Ahh... late-binding!

Anonymous

It's called "high" attachment because, if you draw a syntax tree, it attaches at a higher point (to the entire phrase mori no bijo, not to the lower constituent mori)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A of B is generally not possible. "A's B" or "B of A" are

Anonymous

But it's easier to talk about the role of function words with examples.

Anonymous

わたしの　たまご　watasi-no tamago "my egg" cannot mean *"the egg's me"

Damkerng T.

nods

F.E.

03:14

In writing, like a scene in a novel, we usually follow the guideline of "rule of three's"--so as to not be too repetitious. But for the movie, I think they needed to establish Maleficent's attitude toward Aurora, her dislike and hatred (at first), and that would have been supported by Maleficent referring to Aurora as "Beast" many times. But there were only two of them. Then there was a term "Beastie", and then the 2nd time that term was used was at the end, after the "kiss scene".

That's the main reason why I went to see the move the 2nd time: to count the occurrences of "beast/beastie".

Oh, there was one thing I noticed at the end of the "curse scene"--at the end, Maleficent twirls around and leaves. That is the end of scene. But, if you think about it, you then wonder how Maleficent was going to WALK out of the king's great hall and out of the castle after having laid down a curse on the baby? Surely the king's men would all attack her. . . . .

Yeah, they needed more scenes where Maleficent is being BAD. Yup, yup. Her doing bad things to people. Yes, Tiger would like to see that.

Damkerng T.

03:50

@F.E. lol

F.E.

05:22

yawn . . . (licks paw) . . . (scratches behind ear) . . . scratch, scratch

Cerberus

@F.E. You only lick your paw?

Buddy, you have so much to learn.

F.E.

@Cerberus Who are you? How old are you? Twelve?

Cerberus

@F.E. Yes...

F.E.

@Cerberus Well, I'm not.

Cerberus

05:40

Tsk so mature.

Damkerng T.

05:53

Licks, scratches, claws, chomps. These are what cats do. (I should know; I live with one of them. :)

Sawarnik

@DamkerngT. Isn't it?

Damkerng T.

@Sawarnik It looks like so. :D

Sawarnik

@DamkerngT. I meant their stares are scary.

Damkerng T.

Sometimes. It depends on their mood at the moment. :D

Sawarnik

06:22

@DamkerngT. Don't they mess up the kitchen?

Damkerng T.

They probably do. Mine does! He also likes to scratch on my legs. :(

F.E.

yawn . . .

Sawarnik

@DamkerngT. lol ... Once some stray cat in my house took out milk from the fridge, drank half and spilled the rest all over the kitchen!

Anonymous

Wow! How'd they get the fridge open? :-)

F.E.

On the/a LOL cat site, they had a picture of a staircase going down to the cellar, at night. Very little light. A pair of cat eyes were staring up, from a spot half-way down the stairs. You know that if the guy had gone down the stairs, he'd likely have tripped over the cat and broken his neck. It was an amazing picture. Of course, I didn't bookmark it. :(

I think they were doing "evil cat" series of pictures then.

Damkerng T.

07:30

A user posted a question about CGEL! ell.stackexchange.com/q/26696/3281

Oh, probably a different CGEL.

F.E.

@DamkerngT. Right, that's the 1985 Quirk et al. reference grammar.

I might glance at the OP's question.

F.E.

08:00

@DamkerngT. I gave a quick glance at the OP's question and at the two tables. (You know, the 1985 Quirk et al. book is relatively cheap, at around $100 USA.) The two tables are basically summarizing the pronoun info for those sections. Their terminology is sorta confusing (to me), as that 1985 reference grammar has a lot of traditional grammar terminology (and concepts) in it still.

The OP might want to specify a part of it that they would want explained by an answerer.

Yeah, Quirk et al.'s terminology (e.g. "assertive" vs "nonassertive") would take me a while to, er, translate, and that would probably end up messing up my understanding of the framework in Huddleston and Pullum et al.'s CGEL--and I don't want to do that.

Damkerng T.

I guess those who have this CGEL could answer it. I bet that the book defines the terms.

F.E.

Maybe someone could be nice and edit the OP's title (e.g. "grammar").

@DamkerngT. Er, yes, I do have a copy of that book. And the terminology is defined, in other sections, which would involve some reading. Perhaps the OP could be more specific as to what they are actually wanting to know. . . .

For the tables seem to be rather self-explanatory--to me, anyway. And so, maybe the OP's question could be more specific.

Damkerng T.

It's also rather difficult to guess the English skill level of the OP. I mean, it looks like they already knew what pronouns and determiners are; they might even already know about indefinite pronouns. They could be an ESL teacher, even.

F.E.

The 2nd table even has the referenced sections identified in that table!

@DamkerngT. Tiger too lazy to attempt to try to explain those two tables. Tiger soon take nap. :)

Damkerng T.

08:17

That's quite understandable. -- looking at the clock

F.E.

The OP probably should explain what it is about those tables that is confusing to them.

Yeah, 3 AM. Though I did get some real work done today. A half-hour of constructive edits. Read a few pages in CGEL--Tiger on page 83 now. :)

Oh, do you know that the first 2 chapters of CGEL (the 2002 one) is free on line? No USA dollars. :)

Damkerng T.

Yep. I've downloaded them, though haven't read them yet. :)

F.E.

@DamkerngT. They were downloadable?

Damkerng T.

Yes, they're in the PDF format.

F.E.

Those two chapters had more good info in them than any other grammar book (for those number of pages), imo.

. . . yawn . . . . Tiger take nap . . .

Damkerng T.

08:24

Have a nice nap!

Rajkumar R

08:50

is there any difference b/w clime and climate?

Damkerng T.

I've never used climate. Perhaps that's the difference. :P

I'm done reviewing and commenting questions on ELL today. I caught up! Also, I made a handful of typos and questionable sentences (from the grammatical point of view). Too lazy to fix them. :P

Sawarnik

10:31

@snailboat Don't know! ... maybe it has some genetic mutation!

@DamkerngT. English is boring...

jimsug

11:25

@DamkerngT. are you in chat?

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I just saw the ping.

jimsug

Yeah, I'm curious about as she did it

because it doesn't really do much there...

did is a pro-VP, standing for screamed as loud as she could

Damkerng T.

I think we agree on the meaning, and maybe the parsing too.

jimsug

I don't know if it actually means it ("Kyle")

Damkerng T.

I think it's likely to refer to that "Kyle!".

jimsug

11:28

> ... as she screamed Kyle.

Well, problem is

> as she did.

> as she did it.

I'm having trouble trying to elicit the difference between these two.

Damkerng T.

If the author wrote it as as she did, I would read it as ellipsis.

jimsug

I'm almost sure there is none.

Damkerng T.

Practically none. -- nods

jimsug

What if it had instead said:

> She screamed as loud as she could, praying inside as she did it.

Zhanlong Zheng

Hi, I am back.

Damkerng T.

11:29

@ZhanlongZheng Hello!

jimsug

Hey! :)

Zhanlong Zheng

I have edited my previous Q. Would you plz edit your answer accordingly @jimsug

Damkerng T.

@jimsug It sounds a little odd.

> She walked in the park, whispering as she did it.

Zhanlong Zheng

BTW, did you receive my email? @DT

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng I'm sorry, I haven't checked my mailbox for a few days already.

@jimsug Hmm... The only way to make sense of it is to think of the whole activity as "it".

Zhanlong Zheng

11:32

eh, you are not a emailphilia :)

jimsug

yeah, that's the issue; both did and it can refer to the entire VP.

@ZhanlongZheng This one? StoneyB sure is taking his time with that answer :P

3

Q: My understanding of "could"

I could play with my dear friends tomorrow at the seaside. Unfortunately, my sister happened to fall ill. I'll have to break my promise and stay at home to take care of her. I could play with my dear friends tomorrow at the seaside, but this all depends on whether my mom will allow me to....

modal-verbs

Zhanlong Zheng

yep.

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng Looks like I'm not. :) I just checked my mailbox and saw your mail. Thanks!

jimsug

The interesting thing about could in _You could have told me you were getting married, for instance, is that it relies on a whole bunch of assumptions.

You could have told me you were getting married

\> But you didn't.

Zhanlong Zheng

Good, hope you enjoy Ballard.

jimsug

11:36

\> and I'm displeased that you didn't tell me.

Zhanlong Zheng

maybe the speaker is her ex :)

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng I think I will. :D

@ZhanlongZheng Or his. :D

jimsug

I'm looking at that first sentence, and the more I look at it, the less sense it makes in the present tense.

> I could play with my dear friends tomorrow at the seaside. Unfortunately, but my sister sister happened to fall ill. I'll have to break my promise and stay at home looking after her to take care of her.

> I could have played with my dear friends tomorrow at the seaside. Unfortunately, but my sister sister happened to fall ill. I'll have to break my promise and stay at home looking after her to take care of her.

Damkerng T.

+1

jimsug

Also, unfortunately, but doesn't work.

Zhanlong Zheng

11:39

I think I didn't contrive it well

What about this: "You could ask before you borrow my car. " I cannot conceive its context.

Damkerng T.

I guess the original version (iirc) would sound quite okay, if it was fixed by changing to could have played.

(Though I think it's not a good idea to change example sentences in questions.)

jimsug

> You could have asked before you ate my dessert

(But you didn't)

(And I'm unhappy, because I wanted my dessert)

Zhanlong Zheng

But it's "You could ask", not could have

jimsug

Using that as a criticism works because otherwise, it seems like a pointless observation.

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng The way I understand it, the asking still doesn't happen.

jimsug

11:42

If it's something that occurs regularly.

Say I have a housemate that always has long showers in the morning.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... Habitual reading is possible too.

jimsug

"You could ask before locking yourself in there for an hour!"

Zhanlong Zheng

I imagine the speaker is stopping the other from taking his car.

why not "You should ask before locking yourself in there for an hour!"?

i think it's easier to understand

Damkerng T.

It's about judging.

I think one of your questions has got an answer that mentions judging.

Zhanlong Zheng

Btw, I read Leech, Geoffrey N. 2004. Meaning and the English Verb this afternoon. I think it outdoes PEU a lot. I will keep reading it and try some of his other works. Soon I guess I can figure it out.

jimsug

11:50

@ZhanlongZheng interestingly, my answer doesn't change much; added a bit about implicatures (which I don't actually name as such, since it's highly contested amongst semanticians)

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng It might make you feel that, because it tries to explain the subtle cases clearly and put things in a framework of linguists. However, I guess that once you finish reading it, you will find that it agrees with everything PEU says.

Zhanlong Zheng

@jimsug I wonder why you didn't put your 'could have played' point in your answer. I think other visitors would feel confused. FumbleFingers did mention that in his comments.

Damkerng T.

The problem is PEU says things concisely (maybe too concisely). It simplifies things a lot, cause it was designed for learners.

jimsug

Oh yeah, forgot about that... got caught up in social context :P

Zhanlong Zheng

I didn't say it does not agree with PEU. Leech's works are very easy to understand even for a novice.

That's the merit!

Damkerng T.

11:56

I knew. I felt something similar too when I read Aspect.

Hmm... probably Aspects.

(I can't really remember the title of the book.)

@ZhanlongZheng "very easy to understand even for a novice" -- I still wonder about this part, though. :D

Zhanlong Zheng

I guess learners need details. Everytime I get interested in some part of PEU, it says goodbye to me.

Damkerng T.

Different learners need different things, I think.

Zhanlong Zheng

even a layman can understand his works well.

Damkerng T.

There is a recent question on ELL asking about graded reading. It made me think of the reading skills a bit more seriously. I mean, how much do we need to know before we can really read a book written entirely in our L2?

At that point, chances are, we already knew too much.

Zhanlong Zheng

L2?

Damkerng T.

12:06

L2 ~ second language

jimsug

How much is too much?

Damkerng T.

(It's a typical term in this kind of books.)

jimsug

It takes me less than a day to read each of the Harry Potter books in English. But...

Damkerng T.

My "too much" means much enough that too many incorrect patterns were already mended into our mind.

jimsug

It took me about a week to read the first book in French.

Zhanlong Zheng

12:07

How fast you are!

Damkerng T.

That was very quick. I remember that I had to spend the whole week to get through the first five pages of the first English book I read.

jimsug

Well.

I guessed some of it.

Some of it made no sense when I guessed. For example, wand

Damkerng T.

I guess that it's very different form the one in English. :D

Zhanlong Zheng

I remember I had difficulty in reading English magazine when I was at university.

Damkerng T.

I couldn't read Student's Weekly, even though obviously it was for students.

jimsug

12:11

@DamkerngT. Let's just say that when you read baguette, you don't think wand

Zhanlong Zheng

articles from mag and papers are much harder than textbooks.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

@ZhanlongZheng It depends, I guess. But I think I agree with you.

jimsug

Also, I'd never have made it through if I'd looked everything up - French has a whole different system for verb conjugation in writing.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug baguette means nothing to me. (Probably just a French sounding word.)

jimsug

Baguettes.

Damkerng T.

12:13

Ahh... I might have eaten some of them when I traveled Europe. :D

Zhanlong Zheng

I have a vocabulary of 10,000 but I still feel difficult to read some serious articles, even some comments in Amazon.com.

How old are you? @DT

Damkerng T.

45

jimsug

Also, internet language is a lot more casual

and so it's probably filled with slang and non-standard forms, which is frustrating for learners.

Damkerng T.

I would say that my last 1.5 years on English have about the same value of 25 years before that in total.

nods

I think vocab is probably not the most difficult things. I think it's the senses of those first 10,000 words.

Particularly, the first 1,000 ones.

Things like get, make, be, should, will, ...

But typically, we count each of them as a word, and ignore their combinations.

Zhanlong Zheng

me too, thx to ELL.

Damkerng T.

12:19

I know that I've been improved a lot since I joined ELL.

Zhanlong Zheng

I'm 26. I started learning English when I was 11 at the middle school.

jimsug

I need a FLL :P

Actually, not so much now.

Damkerng T.

I wish I could learn Chinese (probably Mandarin) soon some day. Maybe next year. :D

@jimsug Hehe. How long have you learned French?

Zhanlong Zheng

But like other asian countries, our education is exam-oriented, so we don't really understand English even though we got high marks.

jimsug

@DamkerngT. I did four years in school, one and a half years in university... that was three years ago.

Zhanlong Zheng

12:24

Chinese is a totally different ball game.

Damkerng T.

@ZhanlongZheng I got a free pass (meaning, I don't have to enter the standard English class) in my university days. See, they tested us, and I was one of their top 10%. And I know that that was amount to almost nothing. I mean my English wasn't really good. Far from it. Shame on me.

@jimsug And you can read a French book in just a week! Neat!

@ZhanlongZheng I look at Chinese characters and I don't know how I could remember them. :D

I mean, there are a lot of them!

Zhanlong Zheng

much less than English. :)

4000 is enough.

Damkerng T.

Eh, I think English has only 26 letters, and Chinese has, I don't know, half a million of them?

Ahh...

That's reassuring. :D

jimsug

English graphemes and Chinese ideograms aren't comparable in that way.

Zhanlong Zheng

I agree. The variations in Chinese are very confusing.

jimsug

12:29

Man_From_India seems to be going through his own book :P

Damkerng T.

A novel about Kyle, I think. :P

@jimsug I thought of prohibition too. :)

jimsug

forbiddance seemed ridiculously archaic/stilted/formal/unidiomatic.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I don't like the way it sounds like. I don't know why.

jimsug

I'm probably just biased because I've never heard it used before.

Damkerng T.

looking it up...

jimsug

12:40

I mean, I know what it means just by looking at it, and I'm not surprised it's a word, but I think that that's literally the first time I've ever seen that used.

Damkerng T.

As I guessed, it's not listed in Macmillan Dictionary.

jimsug

It seems to be a word:

collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/forbiddance

It uses very productive morphology, but I wonder how often it's actually used?

Damkerng T.

nods -- I usually use Macmillan for such a test. I think Macmillan (which is designed for learners) doesn't include rare words.

Macmillan comes with a three-star system (three stars mean very frequent). prohibition has one star. forbiddance wasn't included (my spelling checker also flags it).

jimsug

58 in GLoWBE, none in COCA, and 10 in BNC

Out of nearly 2.5billion words, there are less than 60 occurrences...

Damkerng T.

13:00

My first thought was falter. — snailplane 42 mins ago

Weird. My first thought was falter too.

jimsug

Yeah. fade seemed odd, to me.

Damkerng T.

Oh, Collins defines then again as "on the other hand"? Weird.

jimsug

It's the only definition of it that makes sense... "then" + "again" as separate words doesn't really work.

Damkerng T.

> [then/there again](http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/again#then-there-again) [mainly spoken]
used for introducing a statement that makes what you have just said seem less true, or that is the opposite of what you have just said

I guess Macmillan works much better for learners.

jimsug

Ah, right - that's what you mean.

replacing one idiom with another doesn't really help :P

Damkerng T.

13:04

nods :D

Damkerng T.

13:47

0

Q: What is this? Is this an idiom?

What does this mean? He always makes the day and brings on the night, when things take a turn for the worse.

grammar

Potentially, a sockpuppet.

user116848

@DamkerngT. Hi there:)

user116848

Can we have a small grammar Q&A??

Damkerng T.

Hi! I'm a little busy. I might help a little if it's an easy question. Others can help you too. :D

user116848

So should I ask here or at ELU chat? Your call?

Damkerng T.

ELU might be better at the moment. :D

user116848

13:56

np

user116848

So you busy doing what? If you don't mind me asking

Damkerng T.

I'm moving data between machines. :D

user116848

Yay

Damkerng T.

It's not a difficult task, but I don't want to lose any parts of the data. :D

Damkerng T.

15:42

Hmm... Do we need to become a linguist before we can master our second language?

0

Q: Confusion about adjunct and complement

In my recently concluded test, I was asked to identify the sentence pattern of this sentence: It stands tall I split it as: It | stands | tall S V A For me, "tall" is an additional information and if removed, the sentence still makes sense to me. However, my teacher marked i...

complement adjuncts

I mean I'm sure that I can't analyze some patterns in my first language. (Probably virtually all teachers can't analyze some patterns correctly, too.)

(Or else, our language is probably not a human's one.)

Damkerng T.

Also, I'm more curious about the term concluded test than adjunct or complement.

What is a (or the, definitely the OP's) concluded test?

My guess is it's a final exam. But then again, it might be a culminated test, or just a culminate test, or maybe a culminating test, I don't know.

Or is it an eventuality test?

Definitely, something must be concluded during the test. Well, maybe not during, probably after.

Anonymous

16:18

@DamkerngT. Well, linguistics can help… :-) But it's not a requirement, of course!

Anonymous

Not all linguists are good at language learning, and many language learners are ignorant of linguistics

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think "an X's one" is a habit for you

Damkerng T.

Yes, it's a bad one, I think.

Thinking back, I think I was going to say "a human one", and then changed my mind because that wasn't what I thought.

Even though "a human one" might work (in a sense that it's the opposite of machine ones).

But I didn't feel like "a human language" belong to humans, I think, so the fix, in a split second.

I'm not sure which pattern I should use instead (when I say use, I mean use, not think-and-then-use).

Obviously, I really think of it as something belong to some set, and that something is a representation of the members of that set.

Maybe I should stick with "one of X".

Or maybe I should let the pattern "Z's one" become stronger (zero article before [Z's one]).

What's strange (I love to analyze how my brain works) is, for some nouns I use often enough (like "the OP's X", or "[a person name]'s Z), this pattern seems not to be a problem anymore.

However, when I say something unfamiliar (and *not a human's one is not something I usually say), this pattern comes out again.

Anyway, it's easy to notice the error when I read what I wrote once again. (I guess this is normal for most learners.)

What is difficult is probably doing it right the first, in real-time, without thinking.

(I also have noticed lots of ungrammatical sentences from virtually everyone I met or listened to, spoken in their native tongues (which is the same one as mine), when they speak things spontaneously, unprepared.

Anonymous

16:35

@DamkerngT. Sure, native speaker of English make all sorts of slips of the tongue

Damkerng T.

I guess prepared (or planned or rehearsed) speech, and unprepared (or spontaneous) speech are different. Speech is probably not the real issue. I guess it's the way our brains work that causes such errors.

Anonymous

Spontaneous speech is indeed different from planned speech

Anonymous

That's one reason there are corpora of spontaneous speech

Cerberus

@snailboat Let alone several native speakers!

Anonymous

ninjal.ac.jp/english/products/csj

Anonymous

16:37

@Cerberus That's a slip of my S key. Stupid S key. :-)

Damkerng T.

@Cerberus Eh? What do you mean by that several?

Cerberus

@snailboat Hehe. Yeah it looked like a typo.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Native speaker doesn't usually take a zero plural :-)

Anonymous

@Cerberus My keyboard is sadly deficient.

Cerberus

Hmm.

Why not buy another one?

Damkerng T.

16:38

Oh, I just noticed it. :D

Cerberus

Mine cost €3 at the second-hand shop.

Anonymous

Well, it wasn't that long ago that I bought this one. I feel dumb about it.

Anonymous

Oh, I'd never use a 3-euro keyboard.

Cerberus

Why not?

Anonymous

I need another mechanical keyboard to replace this one.

Anonymous

16:39

Because I've used mechanical keyboards.

Cerberus

Ah.

I'd rather have a working keyboard than a mechanical one, though.

Anonymous

I'd rather have a working mechanical keyboard.

Cerberus

cackle

Anonymous

Unfortunately, I've had rotten luck with mechanical keyboards.

Cerberus

OK so you're just postponing.

Anonymous

16:39

I got the Das Keyboard a while back

Cerberus

No warranties?

Anonymous

But it had firmware problems if you typed > 140 wpm

Cerberus

Ah, I have heard of that.

Anonymous

They never replaced it, but I could get a discount on a new one.

Cerberus

By the way, you know das is the German article?

Anonymous

16:40

I'm aware :-)

Cerberus

OK.

Anonymous

Later on I got a Rosewill keyboard.

Anonymous

Rosewill is NewEgg's house brand.

Damkerng T.

Probably it's the same reason that I still work from my very old PC, even though I have a much newer iMac, which is also way faster than this old PC.

Anonymous

It worked pretty well, but…

Anonymous

16:42

Unfortunately, it had a USB MINI-B port and that can come loose fairly easily if you move the keyboard much

Anonymous

This time, I decided to get a keyboard with the same mechanical switches (Cherry MX Blue)

Cerberus

@DamkerngT. Hmm what is that reason?

Anonymous

But I thought I'd get one with a hard-wired cord.

Anonymous

So I bought this mechanical keyboard from some Chinese knockoff company.

Damkerng T.

@Cerberus Familiarity, I think. :D

Anonymous

16:42

Unfortunately, it was false advertising

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

Anonymous

It claimed to have Cherry MX Blue switches, but it had their own brand of mechanical key switch

Anonymous

And the switches on it fail pretty rapidly…

Cerberus

You couldn't return it?

Anonymous

They feel nice, but they're not reliable.

Cerberus

16:43

My €3 keyboards are all rock solid, they never break.

Anonymous

I'm very happy for you. :-)

Cerberus

This one is an ancient Compaq keyboard.

Hehe.

Anonymous

I've had rotten luck with mechanical keyboards.

Cerberus

I'm sure good mechanical keys are better than my keyboard...

Anonymous

But they're just so much nicer on your hands.

Anonymous

16:44

It's hard to go back.

Cerberus

So why didn't you return the Chinese keyboard when you found the switches were wrong?

Anonymous

Sigh.

Cerberus

You ordered it directly from China?

Anonymous

No, it was drop-shipped.

Cerberus

Drop-shipped?

Anonymous

16:45

Yes

Cerberus

We do not have that here.

I don't know what it is.

Damkerng T.

From what I gathered, mechanical keyboards are good for health, right?

Anonymous

They're good for your hands. Since I've had RSI problems before, that's helpful for me :-)

Damkerng T.

Ahh... I see.

Anonymous

I'm just a dope who buys the wrong things :-)

Damkerng T.

16:59

@snailboat You could use Siri more. :D

BTW, when I said "fighting", I was actually referring to debate which was in a good sense (both of us were cooperating) ;) — Amit Joki 21 mins ago

Ahh... So that's what they mean when they say "fight". :D

Cerberus

@snailboat Happens to us all!

fahdijbeli

19:07

hello

Sawarnik

19:31

@fahdijbeli hello

fahdijbeli

20:45

:)

user116848

20:57

@F.E. Can you tell me what does capital T with small d means in The Cambridge Grammar Of The English Language 2002

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